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UN reiterates need for full humanitarian access in Syria

Xinhua, June 8, 2016 Adjust font size:

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reiterated on Tuesday the need for full humanitarian access in the war-torn Syria as only a partial approval for overland transport of the second instalment of aid to Darayao has been received.

"The UN is reverting to the government to request full access, in order to be able to send the full convoy with all the food that had been in the plan for June," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

"The convoys are very finely calibrated in terms of the kind of relief that was on them, and the second part of the convoy primarily consists of food," he said.

The written request submitted to the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on June 5 included a plan for airlifts -- not airdrops -- as a last resort, to Daraya, Douma and Moadamiyeh in rural Damascus Governorate, and Al-Waer in Homs Governorate, he said.

"That request would only come into play if, for whatever reason, the UN could not get land access," the spokesman added.

Last week, the United Nations continued with its efforts to get humanitarian aid to people in besieged and hard-to-reach areas in Syria. The food aid delivery to Syria's besieged town continues as an inter-agency convoy on Friday returned to Moadamiyeh in Rural Damascus with food assistance completing the June 1 delivery for some 45,000 Syrian men, women and children in need.

In late May, Russia called for a 72-hour "regime of silence" in Eastern Ghouta and Daraya amid deadlocked efforts to turn a cessation of hostilities into a lasting peace in the war-torn Middle East country.

The United States and Russia are co-partners in the so-called Vienna diplomatic process of the International Support Group for Syria, which met last month in the Austrian capital but made no notable progress.

At least 280,000 people have been reportedly killed and more than half of Syria's population have fled their homes since the political crisis and subsequent armed conflict broke out in March 2011. Endit